So where the fuck were they?
Fear gripped his belly as he scanned the sea of faces, a gut-wrenching sickness like nothing he’d ever felt before. He wasn’t going to lose them now. Not after he’d only just found her again; not after he’d only just met his son.
He whipped out his phone and punched Jagger’s number. “Jag.” He drew in a shuddering breath. He’d never asked for help before. Never needed it. “The Jacks shot up the Kaufman Kafe on Stock Street. Evie and Ty were inside. I can’t find them.”
“I’m there, brother. Hold on.”
Zane’s tension eased the tiniest bit and he continued the search. But, when one wall of the building caved in with an earsplitting crash, his heart thundered so loud he thought he would break a rib.
The police arrived and cordoned off the area. Fire trucks screeched to a halt, sirens blaring, lights flashing. Ambulance attendants wheeled a gurney to an old lady lying on the sidewalk. Zane vaguely remembered pushing her outside moments before the deafening explosion. He searched the back alley, the SUV, the side streets, and then returned to the crowd out front, now ten people deep. Where were they?
Smoke filled his lungs, singed his nostrils, the scent bringing back the memory of his utter despair outside Evie’s shop when he thought she was gone. Fuck. He couldn’t go through this again. It was going to fucking kill him.
His heart lifted when he heard the rumble of motorcycles. Moments later, Jagger stalked down the street, six Sinners behind him, drawing the attention of the cops who had little to do but hold the crowd back as the firefighters fought the blaze. Once, that had been him. He’d always been the first one into a building, taking the biggest risks, simply because he had nothing to live for.
Zane met them curbside, briefed them on the layout of the block and then the Sinners dispersed.
“I called Benson. Told him to get his lazy ass down here.” Jagger cut a path through the gawking onlookers with a mighty sweep of his hand. “He’s going to get me copies of the witness reports so we can ID the Jacks involved. Crossing our border, shooting up a café filled with civilians, targeting a brother and his family … They’ve broken every damn code we have. This will bring the ATF down on all of us. National will be involved in this one. But I’m not waiting for the nod from the higher-ups. We’ll find Evie and Ty, and then we’ll hit them hard.”
His family.
Zane had never had a real family. But he didn’t correct Jagger. Evie and Ty were his to protect. He would fight for them. He would die for them. And if that meant they were family, then he’d found something he’d been looking for all his life. But goddammit the MC was no place for them. Not if they were constantly in danger.
“Zane! I got ’em.” Gunner bulldozed his way toward them, Ty on his shoulders, Evie under one arm. “They were looking for you in the ambulances.”
Zane had no words, no thoughts, no ability even to move. He’d been through a lot of shit in his life, seen things no man should ever see, experienced the full range of emotions, but nothing compared to the sight of Evie—his Evie—running toward him, her face streaked with tears and soot, the most beautiful goddamn sight he had ever seen.
With a cry that dispelled the last of his doubt about how she truly felt about him, she threw herself into his arms, and buried her face in his chest. Zane wrapped his arms around her, held her to him, grounded in her warmth. Never in his life had he felt such a complete and utter conviction that he was exactly where he was meant to be.
“Me, too,” Ty said.
With Gunner’s help, Ty slid off his shoulders and pushed his way between Evie and Zane, hugging them both. Zane could think of no more perfect moment.
“Zane?”
“Yeah, bud.”
“Mom’s going to need her coffee now.”
*
“This is your clubhouse?” Evie stared at the grand country house nestled at the foot of the Bridger Mountains. “It looks like something out of the movies where rich people go for the weekend to get away from it all.”
Zane reached over and unfastened her seat belt, a small but courteous gesture, and one she hadn’t expected of an outlaw biker. But then, so far Zane had defied pretty much every expectation she had of who he had become.
Except one. When faced with overwhelming emotion, he still shut down. And the scene at the café definitely fell into the overwhelming category. For both of them.
“We had another clubhouse but the Jacks burned it down,” Tank said from the backseat of the SUV where he’d taken up guard duty and spent the ride cursing about Zane’s driving, to Ty’s utter delight.